


seen everything to see

by dicaeopolis



Series: MY ONE PERSON CRUSADE TO PROVIDE TMA FANS WITH NICE THINGS AGAINST ALL EFFORTS OF CANON [4]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Body Worship, Established Relationship, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Surgery recovery, Trans Male Character, or overtones thereof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22148245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dicaeopolis/pseuds/dicaeopolis
Summary: Martin's recovering from top surgery and asks for help. Jon comes running.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Series: MY ONE PERSON CRUSADE TO PROVIDE TMA FANS WITH NICE THINGS AGAINST ALL EFFORTS OF CANON [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1573123
Comments: 64
Kudos: 652





	seen everything to see

**Author's Note:**

> third jonmartin fic since getting into this podcast three weeks ago. they still haven't left martin's apartment.
> 
> WATCH THIS SERIES for a big ol' multichapter comin soon! if you'd like to hear more of me screaming and ugly crying for thousands of words about how Love Is Real
> 
> i am on the [big](https://dicaeopolis.tumblr.com/post/190114879032) [blue](https://twitter.com/medeawasright/status/1214411446991196160?s=19) websites

Martin opens the door of his flat with two pouches of reddish-yellow liquid clipped to his jeans, tubes disappearing up into his button-down. He’s not wearing his glasses and his hair looks like it hasn’t been washed in a few days - it probably hasn’t, now that Jon thinks about it - but he’s smiling.

“You didn’t have to leave work early, though!” he says, after bending to peck Jon on the lips.

“I wanted to,” Jon assures him. “Got to blow off Elias to his face.” Martin snorts at that, and Jon preens. Making Martin laugh is always a point of pride. “Are you okay?”

Martin hadn’t wanted anyone to stay over at his place after surgery. Something about how socializing is going to be too much of a drain and he’s already got a bunch of frozen meals ready and he’ll probably just want to sleep or read the whole time and yes, he’ll text if he needs anything, he  _ promises. _ Jon hadn’t missed the  _ I don’t want to be a bother _ underneath all that, but he also knows Martin well enough to know when not to push these things. So he’d just resolved to check in a few times a day and trust that Martin will ask for help if he needs it.

That last has been more difficult than Jon had anticipated. He’d driven a loopy Martin home from the hospital and spent the next three days at his desk getting progressively snippier until Basira had point-blank told him to stop worrying, at which point he realized he was, in fact, worrying. It had actually been somewhat a relief to get the text around eleven A.M. reading:  _ could you come over sometime today and help me with something? and could you bring me some body wash? _

“What? Oh - yeah, it’s not an emergency or anything, I just, uh - I’m dirty.”

“Pardon?”

“N-no, I mean - I - I can’t really move my arms right now, and, uh, it’s been a few days - I have a - a washcloth-” Martin stutters a few more times before finally concluding, “I need a shower.”

“Oh.” Jon, midway through taking off his shoes, stares up at him. “Oh, so you need - er - ah, I see.”

Martin, whose cheeks are flushing, raises an arm to rub the back of his neck - and then winces and puts it down. Jon makes a concerned noise and stands up. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, it’s not so bad unless I forget.” Martin fiddles with one of the pouches. “To be honest, I’m oxy’ed out of my fucking mind right now.” Jon is startled into a laugh, and Martin glances up from under his eyelashes, smile quirking the corner of his mouth.

Jon pulls the body wash from the pocket of his jacket and holds it up. “Shall we, then?”

* * *

Martin has set out a washcloth and a basin and a shower stool in his bathroom. Jon takes off his socks and rolls up his sleeves, and then hovers as Martin undresses. Martin leaves his clothing on the toilet lid and holds the drain pouches in one hand as he stands naked in front of the mirror, staring at himself.

It’s midday on an overcast Thursday, a strange time to be in Martin’s apartment. Jon keeps himself out of the reflection as Martin turns to one side and looks at himself in profile. There’s a tiny incredulous smile on Martin’s face, and Jon cannot help but to feel as though he is intruding on something painfully, achingly intimate.

Martin turns to him and pulls him closer, into the mirror’s frame.

Jon inhales sharply, wrapping his arms around Martin’s waist on instinct, but very conscious of the fresh wounds. “Oh - oh, are you - are you okay? Am I hurting-”

“M’ fine,” Martin says, the sound of his smile rumbling against Jon’s cheek. “I’m glad you’re with me.”

“Oh,” says Jon, soft and wondering. “Oh.”

They stand there for a moment, intertwined, and then Jon mumbles into Martin’s new pecs, “…you do need a shower.”

“Oh, hush,” Martin tells him, in the specific tone of voice he uses when he’s trying not to sound fond and failing thoroughly.

So Martin sits on the stool, resting his head back against Jon’s stomach for a moment, and Jon squeezes a dollop of body wash onto the washcloth, dips it into the steaming basin, and gets to work.

Martin is one of the tallest employees of the Institute, taller even than Tim is - was - if he stands up straight. He’s got broad shoulders and thick thighs and a big soft stomach, and Jon, being all of a scrawny five foot six himself, has spent a lot of time thinking about it. He scrubs across Martin’s back, freckles a few shades darker than his skin, and watches him relax, piece by piece, under the massage and the warm water.

When they started dating, Martin had only just started T. Jon has heard his voice crack and deepen, been there when he first learned to shave, watched his body grow hairier and heftier and his face more angular. As the months pass, Jon has watched the progression of Martin’s body, with all its sunburns and zits and freckles and tattoos, with the same fascination he once devoted to a patch of little growing things in his grandmother’s backyard in Bournemouth. Martin these days is broad and solid, with hair curling across his chest, down his stomach.

(There have been less tangible things, too. Martin standing up straighter, dressing with more care, talking more confidently and more often. And smiling more. That had been a big one.)

“I used to put so much effort,” Jon mutters, washing around Martin’s neck and ears, “into trying not to crawl into your lap whenever I was tired.”

Martin snickers. “Why?”

Jon frowns down at the top of his head. “Why’d you spend two years making me tea instead of saying anything about your feelings, hmm?”

“Wash my arms,” Martin says.

“You started it,” Jon singsongs.

_ “Wash my arms.” _

Jon washes his arms, a little awkward when Martin can’t actually raise them much past horizontal. And then he moves around and washes his chest, painstakingly careful.

“And here we can find,” he says, in his primmest academic voice, “a freckle that our researchers had previously tagged about three inches further up. Though its native habitat seems to have disappeared without a trace, the migration patterns of these fascinating creatures are often still a mystery-”

“Oh my god, would you  _ shut up-” _

Martin’s shoulders are shaking with giggles, though. Jon grins to himself.

There’s still permanent marker across the skin here, but Jon can’t really scrub at it without getting water and soap in the open wounds, so he settles for wiping off what he can with the tip of the washcloth. He washes Martin’s stomach and sides, dipping up more soap and water as needed. When he gets down to his hips, Martin shifts. “I can, uh - stand up-”

“No, no - let me-”

Jon touches Martin’s shoulder to keep him sitting, and drops to his knees on the damp tile. He takes Martin’s ankle in one hand - and then, on impulse, turns and presses a gentle, lingering kiss to the inside of his thigh, just above the knee.

“Oh,” breathes Martin. He’s staring down at Jon like he’s about to burst over with something. Jon rests his cheek briefly against Martin’s knee and then starts washing up his calves, around his knees. He nudges Martin’s legs apart and lifts them one at a time to wash the undersides, then up his inner thighs.

It’d probably be sexual, for most people. Jon, rather, feels a quiet sort of rightness to it: kneeling before Martin K. Blackwood, caring for Martin K. Blackwood, caring about Martin K. Blackwood. A way to worship something good and beautiful, for once.

He finishes with his legs and pauses, gesturing towards the patch of curls between Martin’s legs with the washcloth. “Er, did you want to do that yourself?” He doesn’t mind doing it himself, but Martin is touchy about his genitals. Combined with Jon’s own disinterest in sex, this is actually his first time seeing his boyfriend naked at all.

Martin says, very softly, “Yeah, I’d rather that.”

Jon refills the basin with un-soapy water while Martin finishes washing. And then he wrings out the cloth, and rinses Martin head to toe, and pats him dry, and then Martin shoos him away while he gets dressed with an “okay, I can at least do  _ this _ myself.” Jon wanders out into Martin’s flat, feeling kind of heady. Touching Martin for a while tends to do that to him. He’s stopped bothering to be embarrassed about it.

He fiddles around in the kitchen a bit, feeling a vague need to continue doing things for Martin, and returns with a plateful of cheese and crackers and some grapes and a glass of water and bumps into Martin in the hallway and Martin kisses him before he can so much as say hello.

Jon makes a muffled surprised noise, but kisses back as best as he can while he’s holding a plate and a glass. Martin releases Jon long enough to set down what he’s holding, and then starts kissing him again, hands gripping Jon’s hips. Jon stands on his tiptoes and loops his arms around Martin’s neck to kiss him back, open-mouthed and fierce. It can’t be particularly comfortable, with the still-open cuts on his chest, but Martin’s hardly letting go of him any time soon, so Jon lets himself enjoy the squeeze that’s nearly lifting him off the floor of the dim hallway.

(Martin’s capacity to pick Jon up like he doesn’t weigh an ounce is another one of those things that Jon thinks about a lot.)

Martin lets up eventually, but he doesn’t let go. They rest their foreheads together for a moment, both breathless, sparkling.

It’s not even mid-afternoon yet, but Martin downs some more painkillers and starts getting woozy, and Jon has absolutely no desire to go back to the Institute, so they head to Martin’s room. Martin lowers himself down carefully on his back, while Jon pulls off his sweater and socks. He glances down while he’s popping a few buttons of his shirt to see Martin ogling him shamelessly.

“One would think,” Jon murmurs, fondness curling around the words, “that I’d mind being stared at a little more, given the recent revelations about our organization.”

“One would  _ think,” _ Martin retorts, “that I’d be allowed to watch all my early fantasies about my boss’s work clothes getting messy and disheveled play out in front of me.”

“I didn’t say I  _ did _ mind.”

And he  _ doesn’t. _ It’s hard to remember sometimes, but being seen can be a dear pleasure, when it’s done as gently as Martin does.

Jon crawls into the bed next to him. They have to shift around a little, with a couple sharp inhales from Martin and hurried  _ sorry-sorry-sorry _ ’s from Jon. Most of their usual cuddling positions would involve Jon being squished into parts of Martin that are currently in rather a lot of pain. Eventually they settle with Jon kind of wrapped around his arm, nose pressed into his shoulder. Martin’s on his back with his hands clasped over his stomach, which is, apparently, how he’s had to sleep for the past few nights.

“Feels like I’m in a damn coffin,” he grumbles.

“Oh, don’t  _ joke _ about that, dear lord.” Jon presses a slightly distressed kiss to Martin’s shoulder, tangles his leg between Martin’s.

“I felt kind of stupid about this, for a while,” Martin says. “Given, you know, the situation.”

“Hmm?”

“Like-” He gestures at his chest. “Going forward with it. Going to appointments and talking to doctors and getting referral letters, and then going to work and feeling the world ending around us.” Jon hums understanding. “No point planning for the future when you’re pretty sure you aren’t going to have one.”

“And now?” Jon asks. He’s careful to keep the compulsion out of it, but Martin answers readily anyway.

“Well, if the world does end, I’d rather live through the apocalypse with a flat chest. But… I also think that there’s much more likely to be something on the other side if we’ve planned for there to be.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah - is that silly? We might come out of this traumatized and scarred to hell and back, but I believe we  _ will _ come out of it, someday. And if I insist on pursuing the good parts of living now, then - then there will be a future afterwards worth fighting for.”

“I don’t think it’s silly,” Jon whispers into his shoulder. “Though, I’m rather biased.”

“‘I do not believe this darkness will last,’” Martin murmurs into his hair.

_ “Tolkien, _ Martin,  _ really,” _ Jon says, amused.

“You recognized it,” Martin singsongs, and Jon mumbles something noncommittal.

“I understand, though,” he adds. “There  _ will _ be a  _ someday, _ a  _ when it’s over. _ For the world, for all of us in the Archives.”

“Hopefully not for Elias,” Martin mumbles.

“Well, that goes without  _ saying.” _

“And Jared Hopworth,” Martin says thoughtfully. “And Simon Fairchild, and  _ definitely _ Peter Lukas-”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Jon agrees. “The Distortion can stick around, maybe.”

Martin hums, sounding thoroughly unconvinced. “Maybe.”

“And after they're all gone, and we have that future we're fighting for,” Jon says, very softly,. "You and I.”

He’d meant to say it as a question. It doesn’t come out as one.

But:

“You and I,” Martin agrees. “You and I.”


End file.
